Stolen Memories: One Family's Experience with Alzheimer's Disease

Stolen Memories illustrates how Alzheimer Disease (AD) affected our family. It touches upon the not-always-perfect mother-daughter relationship and the resulting guilt. It describes how trying to separate the words of an AD patient from those of my mother created even more problems for me as her caretaker. Stolen Memories is a tool to help others recognize and come to grips with the disease sooner than we did. I hope to build an awareness of the following issues: what this disease can do to a family; how relationships can affect being a caretaker for an AD patient; the difficulties of an untrained caretaker attempting to manage an AD family member; and how important it is to ask for help.